Faith for the Faithless
by cleverdistraction
Summary: Mike comes to a subtle realization when things in Carolyn's life don't go according to plan. The situation unfolds from there. BarekLogan. Oneshot.


Faith for the Faithless

By: Laura

Disclaimers: So totally not mine. I own nothing. They're all Dick's. I'm just…playing?

Rating: T, alluded graphic situations and violence. But only alluded…no actions, but I wanted to be safe.

Pairing: Mike/Carolyn. Did you really think I'd write anything else? Especially after that last episode!

Spoilers: rough, ambiguous ones to The Healer, but if you haven't seen it, you're fine. It was just my inspiration! lol.

Very Important Author's Note: I would like everyone to know these things before reading:

this was heavily inspired by all the talk between Mike and Carolyn about Mike's lack of faith and his lack of religion. I thought this up literally seconds after all of that. And I'm not assuming or promoting any religion, and it is only vaguely religion-specific.

I just used the fact that Carolyn is Catholic to further the plot. I don't see this as any problem, but I just wanted to make that clear. (ps, the passage is I John 4:18, if you were curious). Oh, and I'm not Catholic, so I'm basically making up Carolyn's entire religious life. Sorry if I offend. It wasn't intended; I just wanted this situation to move the plot along. I respect all religions and I'm not trying to push buttons or portray anyone wrongly.

Oh, and this has pretty much nothing to do with Carolyn's religion and more to do with Mike's resolution of how he thinks in terms of faith.

this is where I stop apologizing for everything I'm overthinking. If you like it, you like it; if you don't, you don't. I like it.

---oh, just kidding, because the scenes may seem split and pretty random on the time-line of the fic, IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE THAT. I was going for effect…vague and intuitive. Let me know how it worked.

Faith for the Faithless

----

Sometimes when he looked at her, he couldn't help but see the face of a little girl. She was so innocent looking and so free...every emotion played out on her face like a short film: quick, uncovered, to the point. Truth be told, it was slightly unnerving at first, but upon a closer look, it was more beautiful than it was anything else. It was that beautiful image which crossed his mind on every case, in every spare moment. Every new case, he looked to her face and concentrated first on the look that passed over it. The look of pain and horror. The look of blind acceptance and the struggle for justice. It set his feet on the ground and made him feel alive.

It set him free. Free to go parading around the crime scene, hell bent on finding. It was his duty, first, to find the criminal, but he also began to realize that he was looking for something more. He was, in the wake of her expression, searching for his own salvation. He was searching for his own 'innocent face.'

But then again, he thought, sometimes he realized how much older she looked. How the lines on her face made her look harried and worn...like a woman barely holding on. It made him humble in its presence. It made him feel less human, in a way, more like a robot than he would ever admit out loud. He wished he could muster those particularly uninviting lines to make him look alive and real again. It was a trait that, no matter how much she complained about, he valued. She was real.

It was an oddity that this one woman could build him up and tear him down. She was like adrenaline through his system, a jolt to wake him and push him. She was his saving grace. The only one left for this nonbeliever to believe in.

So, it was only appropriate that his world had shifted when she came in with the news.

She was getting married.

---

His name was Marco. He was Italian. Tall, dark, handsome...built. The picture of perfection. When he sidled up to her, they looked like something from the movies. A tough, beautiful woman with the brawny, handsome man at her side. He was completely overprotective and had this husky, thick accent that seemed to suit her perfectly. If Mike was being completely serious, he couldn't imagine a man better fit for his Carolyn. He was charming and charismatic, attentive and understanding. He was patient and tender. He gave more than Mike thought he himself even had.

He was upper-middle class rich, travelled the world a time or two, and spoke about as many languages as Carolyn herself. He watched once, when Marco called her at work, how they switched from language to language without ever ceasing the conversation. It caught his attention, to say the least. One minute was English, the next Spanish, then some Italian...and after that, a series of languages Mike couldn't even place. Carolyn smiled more in that conversation than he had ever seen her smile in their entire partnership. And instead of jealousy, Mike simply thought, 'I would learn a thousand languages to make you happy.'

Carolyn took her first vacation just before she came back with the news of her engagement. He supposed that Marco had proposed on some beach somewhere in the tropics, or perhaps under the stars in Paris. Something ridiculously corny...but Mike also supposed that Marco had pulled it off spectacularly and that Carolyn had loved it. She never told him where she had gone, and he didn't necessarily think it was any of his business in the first place...but sometimes he thought about it.

Three weeks later, Carolyn had sold her apartment and had moved into their new, swanky apartment in Manhattan. She said it was beautiful and that the view was to die for. He secretly thought that maybe she had uttered those words to Marco. And he hoped that Marco was smart enough to tell her that it in no way compared to his view of her. That she was more beautiful than any view out of a twelfth story window in the city. But, he supposed that this was none of his business, either.

When they had settled on the ring, it had fit her perfectly. It was, like her, understated. It was perfect in its simplicity. Carolyn had never needed, or wanted, lavish things. The ring could've been so much bigger, so much more ridiculous, but Marco had gotten it right. He knew Carolyn. He knew her likes and dislikes...and he made her happy.

Mike thanked him silently for it. He hoped with everything in himself that because he couldn't give her the happiness and perfection she deserved, someone else could. And for that, for his cowardice, he could not hate Marco.

---

It was four weeks after their wedding that Mike had noticed. The light Marco had placed in Carolyn's eyes had faded. She no longer shone as bright. She no longer smiled as deeply. She wasn't happy. But as long as she could pretend, he could as well. So he never uttered a word. Never made any suggestion that things were not as they should have been. But he knew...deep down, in the gnawing pit of his stomach, he knew.

The lines on her face had multiplied...but these weren't good lines. They made her look aged and sad, unhappy and pained. They told him. And he knew.

She came in later with every passing day. Later and with less sleep. She had stopped smiling altogether. When she paid it any attention, the ring on her finger would find itself turned around, the once-perfect diamond sitting clenched in the palm of her hand, leaving painful-looking, jagged imprints. Her immaculate clothing wore wrinkles, and her hair fell flat without their usual curl. She wasn't happy. And with every minute, Mike felt the twisting of guilt wash over him. He knew he should have said something. But it was none of his business, right?

Marriages had their difficulties...but Carolyn's shouldn't have.

He hated seeing her unhappy. And for that, for Marco's stunning oversight and for his own perpetuated ignorance, he hated Marco.

---

For that time, it had been less than easy to pretend, but they had both excelled. Mike pretended he didn't suspect. Carolyn pretended that things were fine. But it was the silence that spoke volumes. Both knew they were lying. Both knew the other was pretending. But neither spoke.

Carolyn started staying later and stopped answering the phone. Mike stayed with her and took all the calls, deflecting Marco's attempts and taking the unsure verbal battering that came from his partner for doing so. But the words left unspoken in her eyes told him all he ever needed to know. _Thank you._

He kept lying to Marco about the partner that sat across from him. _She's in Deakins' office_. _You just missed her, she went to the bathroom._ _She's not here, can I take a message?_

Mike walked her home once a week, when she 'felt like walking.' He hated seeing her walk so far in the dark of the night by herself, especially when he knew she was only stalling her return home. So he walked with her, making up one excuse or another about having to be uptown anyway. After a few weeks, she stopped asking and he stopped telling her.

Some time later, she grabbed his hand as they neared the apartment, her face set in stone as she looked up toward the twelfth floor. She let her hand drop from his almost as soon as she had grasped it and had walked through the doors to the lobby without another glance. The next few times, he held her hand the whole way home, fingers laced together with reassurance.

---

One night, when walking her home, it had started to rain. He pulled her toward the curb and hailed for a cab. She broke away from him and looked up into the night sky, shimmering with thick droplets of cold falling from the heavens. She shook her head to the sky and whispered, "No, I'm going to walk..." and she had twirled around on the sidewalk, mindful of others, looking more like that little girl than ever. The hurried people passed by without a word, throwing odd glances at her from underneath their colorful umbrellas. She hadn't noticed.

He walked with her. Endless blocks. In the rain.

He put his bulky coat across her shoulders and held her hand as she swung their arms slightly. She smiled for the first time in weeks: a slight, wry smile, but a smile nonetheless. It faded as soon as the apartment came into view. The raindrops seemed to cry her tears that night. He had never seen her look so sad before. Not even at the beginning of this ordeal. She saw him watching her and gave him a weak smile, kissed his wet cheek and walked through the doors, soaking through and through, and wearing a coat three sizes too big.

It was the next night that they had _the_ conversation.

It had been getting late--later than usual--and when she came back from the bathroom, face freshly splashed with cold water. She gathered her things to leave, pushing together the piles of papers on her desk and grabbing her coat from the rack on the wall. He hadn't realized how much he had blinded himself until that moment.

He burst up out of the desk chair and lifted the hem of her shirt that had ridden up her side. She swung around, red-faced, and pulled her shirt down roughly. He looked at her in angry confusion and gingerly pulled her hands from their hold on the hem of the shirt.

"How long?" he had asked, simply, cutting through all the bull-shit of the past months. She crossed her arms in front of her chest and backed away, almost angrily. He repeated desperately, "How long?"

"A month after I married him..." She looked away, ashamed and embarrassed. He cursed under his breath and pulled her to him gently, enveloping her body in his own as he held her tightly. Silent tears threatened to fall from his eyes as he thought of all the times he had walked her home. To him. He thought of all the times his damned gut had told him that something wasn't right. That he should've said something.

"Why," he cleared his throat as it threatened to crack, "why did you stay?" She looked up into his eyes, seeing his tears mirroring her own.

"I...I'm pregnant..."

"You can't...you can't stay with him...not because of that..." She looked at him, incredulous.

"And then what? Let this baby grow up without a father? Forsake all the vows I've taken before God...before my parents...before you?" She broke out of his embrace, pain and confusion written in the lines of her face.

"No kid deserves a father who abuses its mother! And what if he does something worse than a couple of bruises to your abdomen? What if, God forbid, something really awful happens to you? You going to put that kid in jeopardy, too? Just because you took some fucking vows? He took some vows, too, Carolyn! He promised to love you and cherish you and million other things he hasn't done! I think those vows are good and broken! If your God can't understand your reason for leaving, I think you'd be better off without Him!"

"So says the man that has never had any kind of faith in his entire life! How dare you berate my God and my beliefs when you don't even understand what faith is! You don't have any faith, any belief, any trust…all this, coming from the man who sleeps around like it's going out of style! You don't even know what a commitment to another person is, let alone commitment to something bigger! Marriage is a commitment...I'm not leaving because we hit a little rough patch...he may be a bastard, but loves me and he will love this child. Say what you want about my choices, Mike, but leave my faith and my marriage out of it." She stalked toward the elevator, walking briskly and angrily.

He called after her, "He loves having you has his punching bag, Carolyn...not as his wife!" She was gone. And as soon as it had begun, it had ended, and he found himself nursing an even larger ache in his gut.

----

He had gotten the call at three in the morning. Deakins had sounded distraught and wouldn't tell him anything over the phone. Only that he needed to get down to the hospital as soon as possible.

It was Carolyn.

He had sped through the city, running lights and stop signs, making a mental note as to why he had never been caught.

All he knew was that he needed to be there. He needed to see her. He needed her to survive this. He needed her to leave once she was released from the hospital. But the lump in his throat made him wonder if she would live to see that day.

He cursed himself and his mouth, feeling (beyond anything else) that the words he had spoken to her earlier had only sealed her fate. He felt guilty and broken, as if he had caused her pain—that he had raised his fists to her himself.

He cursed the fact that he had ignored his gut. He knew that he should have never let her leave alone. He should have never let her return to a man that was capable of such abuse. He should have followed her. He should have stopped her. He should have picked her up, thrown her over his shoulder, and forced her in the opposite direction.

He should have...

----

He burst through the emergency room doors with a look of sheer panic on his face. Deakins jogged over toward him from his place in the sea of hard plastic chairs in the waiting room. Mike had never seen him look so worn, so exhausted. Deakins was worried. More than he was angry or hopeful or anxious, he was worried.

Something terrible had happened. _Where was she?_

"She's in surgery...she's got a couple broken ribs, and a collapsed lung, among other things...and...she's, ah, she's pregnant, Mike." Mike nodded his head at Deakins' pause. "They...they don't know if it'll survive. There was a lot of trauma; they're doing all they can...all we can do is wait."

"Will she...will she..."

"Survive? They don't know...but, Mike? Mike, look at me," He raised his face, unshed tears threatening to fall, "It doesn't look good." _Fuck._

----

He hadn't ever believed in anything beyond himself. He had never prayed and had never asked any God for anything. He had never seen the use in faith. He had never tried. But as he sat vigil outside the ICU, he found that the only thing he had ever truly believed in was her.

He had always had faith in _her_. He had always looked to _her_. _She_ was his saving grace.

He looked over her bruised and bloodied body lying helplessly on the stark white, sterile cotton sheets. Her lip was broken and swollen, painted a raw crimson as the blood ceased its flow. There were bruises covering her arms in varying degrees of intensity. Distinct bruises of fingerprints had settled themselves around her neck. There were cuts and scratches across her legs and hands. And though he couldn't see them, there were incisions and stitches down her chest and torso from the surgery.

He had never cried much in his life. He had decided at a very young age that life sucked and that crying about it didn't help anyone. Least of all the people who needed it. He didn't cry at weddings or births, and least of all funerals. He didn't cry when his goldfish, the only pet he was ever allowed to have, died when he was four. He wasn't a crying man.

When they rolled Carolyn into the ICU, he had cried. He had sat in a chair across the hallway, looking in the doorway at her, and cried. He hadn't even tried to hide his tears. He let them fall freely, roll down his cheeks, and moisten his collar. It was the first good cry of his entire life.

He cried for his Carolyn because she was far from recovered. He cried for his hatred of Marco and for the pain that she had gone through at his hands. He cried for the lost time and the conversation that followed.

But most of all, he cried because he didn't know how he was going to tell Carolyn that her baby hadn't survived.

----

Marco had been arrested before Mike had even made it to the hospital. Held on domestic violence and assault. At least overnight, if not longer. Mike supposed Carolyn had made enough friends down in booking to lose his information long enough for him to be held for a couple days.

Mike had gone down to the apartment in the afternoon, waved his badge, and found himself standing inside Carolyn's apartment. It was airy and sterile-looking. There were wood floors and white walls. The furniture was stiff and expensive. There were no pictures hanging on the walls, no opened books on the coffee table--almost nothing out of place. It was the model home. Except for the lamp shattered in the corner and the picture frames broken on the floor.

He had found his way into the bedroom, rummaged through the closet to find Carolyn's duffel and suit bag. He picked out her clothes and shoved them in bags. He went through drawers and closets, bathrooms and the living room. He had packed until the suitcases were full, and then he put everything else into plastic bags. He searched the house high and low, determined not to leave anything behind. He had packed her clothes and toiletries, her makeup and accessories. But as he did his last walk-through of her apartment, he found her necklace sitting between the opened pages in an old bible on her nightstand. The necklace, perpetually around her neck and hidden beneath her shirts, was long and thin with a simple silver cross attached. There was nothing more constant in his life than Carolyn and her necklace...the same necklace he held from his fingertips.

He looked down to the frail bible in the drawer, dog-eared and worn from use. There were underlined passages and scribbled inscriptions. He sat down on the bed and read the underlined section, thinking of her as he did so. She would have been so proud of him. He ran his fingers along the lines and shut the book gently, smoothing over the top cover with his palm. He sat up and pocketed the necklace and carried the book with him as he maneuvered the suitcases to the elevator and out to his car. He sat the bags in the backseat and the bible on the passenger side as he drove to his apartment.

----

She had been in the hospital for a week and a half before she was released. It was touch-and-go for the first couple days, but his Carolyn was fighter. She was sore, numb, and groggy most of the week, with few forays into conversation--least of all with Mike. But on the day of her release, he marched into her room and refused to leave until she listened to him.

"You're coming home with me." She shook her head and whispered 'no.' "No, Carolyn, you aren't going back to him. I let you once...and...and I'm never doing that again. You're staying with me...I, I moved your things out of the apartment and into mine. It isn't much, but the bedroom and sheets are clean...and no one is going to hurt you there. I swear it..."

"Fine."

"Okay, good…" he paused, unsure of how to continue. He spoke after a moment, his voice barely at a whisper, "Car...I...did the doctors talk to you about the surgery, yet?"

"Yes."

"So, you...know?" he asked hesitantly.

"Yes." she choked out before looking away from him, the tears spilling over her eyelids.

"Please talk to me, Car...scream, yell, cry...anything, just talk to me..." he pleaded, covering her hand with his own.

"I don't know what you want me to say."

"Anything...tell me what you're feeling..."

"I feel numb and alone and…hollow. And I feel…like I don't want to talk about it." He looked at her for a moment, judging whether she would continue, and, seeing the blank look on her tear stained face, stood up.

"Okay...okay. Let's go...we need to get you settled in." She looked up at him, pain evident in her eyes.

"Home?"

"Yea...we're going home..."

----

The air in his apartment was stale upon entering, a sure sign that Mike had spent little time in his apartment over the past week. The chairs and tables were littered with books, reciepts, and file folders. There were takeout boxes in the trash, and the kitchen looked far from used. The leather couch looked was worn, lived-in, and slightly messy.

He led her down the hallway and into his bedroom, where the floor was clear and the bed was made impeccably. Her clothes were hanging next to his own in the closet. Her accessories were set on the drawer and in the bathroom. And on top of one pillow sat her opened bible. Her eyes scanned the room and took it all in.

"Mike...I...thank you." She turned around to face him where he stood just inside the doorway. She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her neck in his face. He brought his arms up to embrace her very delicately, afraid to touch her slowly healing body. When she pulled back and began searching through the drawers, he spoke.

"It's no twelfth story apartment in Manhattan...but it serves its purpose..."

"I love it...and...I never wanted the twelfth story, anyway. This is...much better." She walked over to the bed and sat down on the edge, feeling the soft of the sheets beneath her fingers. She looked to the pillowcase and pulled the book into her lap. "I thought...I thought maybe I wouldn't see this again...that maybe you wouldn't find it..."

"You, umm, I...lift up your hair..." She tilted her head and took in his comment with confusion but pulled her hair back as he approached. He pulled the long necklace out of his pocket and crouched in front of her on the floor. He slipped the necklace around her neck, careful of the bruises and cuts. He ran his forefinger down the thin, silver chain until he reached the cross. He held it with his fingertips and stared at it intently as he spoke. "When you were...in the hospital...I sat by your bedside, or I sat just outside the door when I wasn't allowed in...every day, every night. I just...sat. I thought a lot while I was there...about you, and us, and that sinking feeling I've had in my gut for the last couple months. I promised myself that, from now on, I wasn't going to let anything go unsaid. And so, sometimes, I would just sit there and talk. I'd tell you everything I was feeling and everything I wanted you to know. And for the first time in a long time, I cried. I cried almost every night. For you. For the..." His breath hitched in his throat as her continued, "…the baby. For us. And most selfishly, for myself...I thought about what you told me before all of...this happened. About faith. And when I sat beside you, I felt it. I felt my faith. Not in a God that I know nothing of, but my faith in you. You are my strength and my courage and my belief. You are my saving grace. And I felt it. Then, I thought that, maybe, I'm not such a hopeless case anymore...and a little bit after that, I left. I went to the apartment, packed your things, and moved you here. But in the midst of all that, I found this. And I read the page you'd marked...so I marked one of my own." He let the necklace drop onto her chest and reached over to point to the page.

She looked down at the neat, red-underlined passage and read, "There is no fear in love; for perfect love casts out fear." (I John 4:18)

"Even when you were afraid, you weren't afraid with me. Did you ever notice that? We stayed at work late and you were happy—safe—even after thirteen hours. And when we walked all those blocks home, it was safe. Not because we're cops and not because I'd always protect you...but because we were together. The same goes vice-versa, too. I worried about you every day I thought you were unhappy. But when you were around, I forgot that pit in the bottom of my stomach telling me that something wasn't right. And when Deakins called me that night, I was terrified out of my mind. When he told me that they didn't know if you'd make it, I was even more terrified. I wanted nothing more than to go hunt him down and shoot him until he was unidentifiable...but when they told me I could see you and sit with you, everything vanished. Everything. Every doubt, every thought of hatred, every fear. And in that moment, I knew you'd be okay. I knew you'd pull through as long as I stayed with you...as long as I kept loving you. So, when I read that," he pointed to the page, "I knew what we had...and I knew what faith really was. I knew that I _did_ have it...but I also knew that I've never actually felt it before you. You gave me faith."

She laughed gently, teasingly, and said, "That was taken completely out of context, but beautiful nonetheless." The tears glistened in her eyes and she wiped at them hastily. She looked into his eyes and smiled. The lines on her face vanished and she looked at him with the innocence he loved to see so very much.

"Well, that John guy isn't too bad, I guess. He's pretty smart...like you; I can see why you like it so much." He leaned up to kiss her forehead.

"You do know that's not the only reason, right?"

"Hmm?"

"Because 'that John guy is pretty smart'...you know that's not the only reason I believe, right?"

"Yea, I know...and I think I'm finally understanding it..." He smiled at her, got to his feet, and turned to walk out before she managed her next words.

"So, you love me, then?" Her voice sounded small in the large room. He turned back to her, halfway out the door.

"Yea...yea, I do." He tapped on the doorframe and left the room, stopping in the hallway as he heard her voice call to him a few steps later.

"I was never afraid with you. When you held my hand, everything disappeared and...I wanted it to last forever. You gave me strength to face everyday...the strength to leave, the strength to live." He walked back into the room, slightly confused.

"When did you leave?"

"Right before he sent me to the hospital. That's why it got so bad, Mike...on the ride home, I knew that you were right in the office, no matter how poorly you expressed it, and I knew what I had to do. When I got home and he tore into me, I told him I was leaving and that he couldn't stop me…and, in the end, he didn't."

"So...you...love me, then?" he echoed, hestitantly.

"Yea, I guess I do." She smiled at him once more and walked over to him. He reflected it back at her as they made their way out to the living room in companionable silence.

---

They sat on the couch for an hour, or so, him with his arm across the back, protecting her. They sat in relative silence, pretending to watch the television before them. She laid her head on his shoulder as the night grew dim and his heart beat faster, promising to keep her safe. As her eyes grew tired and heavy, he grazed her cheek gently with the back of his hand, mindful of her tender lip, and woke her. He stood up and grasped her hands to lead her to the bedroom. They walked together with his arm stretched across her back and rested on her hip, her head finding its spot on his shoulder as they stumbled down the small hallway.

He laid her in bed, made sure she was comfortable, kissed her cheek, and left. She fell asleep shortly after he left.

He fell asleep covered in a sheet on the couch, with a cushion for a pillow. He was comfortable and happy, but as he drifted off to sleep, his thoughts remained on the woman sleeping in his bed.

----

In the middle of the night, after a few hours of less than memorable dreams, a nightmare woke him. He bolted off the couch and ran down the hallway. Panicked, he rubbed his eyes and opened the bedroom door to find Carolyn sleeping peacefully. Finding her safe, his heart slowed its tenacious beat. He looked at her sleeping there, hair slightly tousled and the soft streams of street lights played across her face.

He thought for a moment that she looked a little like a fallen angel sleeping there.

----

The road before them--of pain and anger and tears--would be long and winding, but they had found their reasons to continue.

She had found her rock, her strength, her protection.

And he had found his faith.

The End.

Please R&R, I'd really love to know what you all think about it!


End file.
